May 27A good day with JeffThis is a story about Jeff Bezos which I’ve told many times over the years, but which I don’t think I’ve ever written down. And although he is surely a Bad Man for his stance on unions and employee rights, and history should frown upon him, Jeff is not a…Amazon6 min readAmazon6 min read
May 11We’re Gonna Need a Bigger MoatEveryone making SaaS on LLMs, including coding assistants like Cody and Copilot, was rocked by the AI news events of last week. None of it is news per se. But last week, two events at Google highlighted something crazy big brewing for about 10 weeks that’s been flying under everyone’s…Llm13 min readLlm13 min read
Jun 28, 2021The Death of Richard DawkinsA short story by Steve Yegge Note, 2021: I wrote this story some years back, more or less as a 30-year-belated make-up assignment for a bad short story I wrote in high school. I don’t 100% trust Google not to lose the story by shutting down the site, so I’m…Transhumanism33 min readTranshumanism33 min read
Aug 15, 2020Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy is Killing YouGod dammit, I didn’t want to blog again. I have so much stuff to do. Blogging takes time and energy and creativity that I could be putting to good use: my novels, my music, my game, and so on. But you get me riled enough, and I have to blog. …Google Cloud Platform23 min readGoogle Cloud Platform23 min read
May 19, 2020Saying Goodbye to the Best Gig I Ever HadSaying Goodbye to the Best Gig I Ever Had Friday was my last day at Grab, and I wanted to give a quick retrospective, plus tell folks what I’m up to. I didn’t get a chance to say a proper goodbye to so many folks in Southeast Asia, due to…Grab17 min readGrab17 min read
May 18, 2019Google to Grab: One year laterBig Fat Disclaimer: I DO NOT SPEAK FOR GRAB. I work there, but these are my own opinions. Not Grab’s. It’s now been 15 months since I joined Grab, the ride-hailing and financial services Super App giant of Southeast Asia. The time has gone by so fast. I’m on a…Grab9 min readGrab9 min read
Jan 24, 2019The Song of the Golden DragonI’ve never before been inspired to write an essay about a piece of music. This is a first for me; we’ll see how it goes. Update, April 2020: I did eventually record my special version of it — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK244wAQ3Qo — enjoy! You know that feeling when you find a new…Music11 min readMusic11 min read
Nov 25, 2018Member-onlyJeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and the Quest to Kill eBayThe right — and wrong — way to compete with a locked market — This is the story of the first time Jeff Bezos got something spectacularly wrong. It’s the story of why he was wrong, what happened afterward, and what we can learn from it. It’s also the story of how Jack Ma tackled exactly the same problem a few years later, and…Amazon16 min readAmazon16 min read
May 21, 2018Get that job at GrabNote: I do not speak for my employer, Grab. These thoughts and opinions are solely my own. Ten years ago I published a blog post titled, “Get that job at Google”. …Interview16 min readInterview16 min read
Mar 12, 2018Who will steal Android from Google?Who will steal Android from Google? Disclaimers: These are my own personal opinions. A lot of them are probably wrong. I do not speak for my employer (Grab!). Take all this with a healthy grain of salt. In fact, don’t even read it. Here I am, writing a Medium post…Android13 min readAndroid13 min read